Every school is unique and has its own demographics and issues. Every learner comes to school with their strengths, challenges, background, and concerns. In fact, each class is unique because of the teacher and how they present what it means to be part of the class. One way to build the culture is to start the year by getting to know each other. The time you spend building a strong classroom culture in the first few weeks of school will bring amazing returns every day of the year. You can build a compassionate classroom and place relationships at the center of the classroom that are based on trust and respect. Relationships matter! So how do you build trust and a caring classroom?

Our first questions should be, “What do children need?”… followed immediately by “How can we meet those needs?” Alfie Kohn

Culture Building Activities

Here are a few culture building activities for any age learners to build a positive classroom culture where they get to know and care about the teacher and each other.

1. Welcome Message

What message does your classroom give right when people walk in? What about creating a welcome sign? The picture on the left has a message that you can make personal to represent the culture in your class. The welcome sign doesn’t have to be a sign; it can be a poster or a welcome mat. The idea is to make your classroom inviting to anyone who wants to learn or visit your class.

2. Special Greetings

Instead of jumping right into academics as soon as your learners come in the door, what about coming up with a special greeting just for your class? Some teachers even have special handshakes. You don’t have to memorize a special handshake for each learner, but please memorize their names. Find a way to make each learner unique and valued for who they are. Do some homework to find out something each learner is passionate about or some event they were involved in. When you greet each learner, look them in the eye, say their name, and mention something or ask a question about them, it makes a difference. I saw this video from the Atlanta Speech School on Facebook and felt it just had to be shared here also.

3. Morning Meetings

A compassionate classroom is also a responsive community. A morning meeting is an engaging way to start each day and to focus on social-emotional learning using strategies to foster a sense of belonging and caring. The teacher can start off the year defining empathy and model how to do active listening. Learners can sit in a circle and greet each other. The teacher can invite learners to pair with someone they haven’t shared with before. Then have them ask each other questions about something important in their lives. The teacher can then bring everyone back and start the day with an activity or question to think about during the day. One question could be “How will you reflect on your learning today?”

4. The Power of YET

Start the year by reviewing the words we say and what they mean. In a previous post, 7 Ideas to Discover Magic in Your Classroom, I mentioned fixed vs. growth mindset. After meeting with some teachers and learners, I saw the emphasis on using the word: YET. Start off the year talking about mindset and the words that demonstrate a fixed mindset and how changing the words and statements so they demonstrate a growth mindset. But we are humans and creatures of habits. We tend to go back to saying “I can’t..” and “I’m not…” Share the word YET and see the power of it. Say it over and over until your learners use it all on their own and maybe even to correct you.

5. Me Too Activity

Have learners share something about themselves and what they like to do such as “I like Minecraft.” If other learners also like Minecraft, they then stand up and say “Me too!” Continue to invite learners to share something and see who else has the same interests or facts. Then give them time to share with each other. If they enjoy tinkering, designing, and building, invite them to put together a proposal on what they would like to create together. Have them share with another group for feedback. This Me Too activity can be used for anything that learners may want to do together.

6. Reflections

Put time aside at the end of the day or period for reflection. Come up with a question for learners to consider for reflection. A question could be about “What did you do to take a risk today in your learning?” I saw learners doing this reflection at Viscount Primary School in Mangere district of Auckland . It was very powerful to listen to the discussions they had with another learner about the risks they took. Then the teacher invited all learners to sit in a circle and share any thoughts about their reflections. It was so cool that everyone wanted to share. You could see a real compassionate classroom where everyone cared about each other.

You may find that building a culture is bigger than just one classroom; it involves the whole school. Check out the resources put together by KnowledgeWorks to help you build a positive culture.

This is Barbara Bray sharing Episode #2 of the Rethinking Learning podcast with Tamara Letter about finding kindness through Passion Projects. Tamara added a post below the podcast expanding on what we talked about and included links and a few pictures. Please take a moment, listen and read more about Tamara’s journey to bring passion to learning through kindness. Enjoy!

Episode #2: Conversations with Tamara Letter on Passion through Kindness

Celebrating Kindness found my Passion

Five years ago, I was searching for a fun way to celebrate my 40th birthday. I decided to do 40 random acts of kindness and share the stories behind each act I completed. As a mom of three and an educator for twenty years, I know the impact positive actions can have on others. My goal was to sprinkle a little kindness into the world around me for each year I’ve been alive. I created my first blog, http://celebratekindness.wordpress.com, and started sharing my posts on Facebook and Twitter. What I didn’t realize at the time was this birthday celebration was actually a deeper passion of mine to make the world a better place.

Why Teachers Need to be Valued

As an instructional technology resource teacher, my purpose is to empower teachers to integrate technology into their daily instruction. I work in collaborative partnerships with teachers and administrators to find the best ways to engage students while teaching an age-appropriate curriculum. Working so closely with teachers and their students helps me to strengthen relationships and, in turn, support their individual learning needs as we learn and grow together. The role of an educator has changed drastically since I entered the profession in 1997. Teachers are asked to wear a multitude of hats each day as they care for their students’ academic, physical, social, and emotional needs. They are shaping the hearts and minds of our community with each child that enters their classroom; we need to value our teachers with respect and showcase the greatness they do every day!

Passion for Kindness projects

This year I worked in a collaborative partnership with Mrs. Cross, a fourth-grade teacher at Mechanicsville Elementary School. We wrote a grant called “A Passion for Kindness” and were awarded funds from the Hanover Education Foundation to implement a year-long kindness initiative with her students. Each week we would meet to learn more about kindness: reading books, engaging in collaborative activities, and reflecting on the kindness we saw or experienced in our lives. Students used their Kindness Journals to document their stories to #CelebrateMonday or #FlyHighFri and I would share stories with them that were posted on Twitter or other kindness platforms like The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation or the Facebook group Reward for Kindness . Students continued showing kindness to others with activities like creating inspirational posters to display around our school and sharing flowers with school staff.

As the year progressed, we surprised our students with a ten dollar bill, allowing them to create a random act of kindness project to benefit someone other than themselves. Students brainstormed in collaborative groups, sharing their project ideas on Google Classroom, then researched the costs of items to stay within their ten dollar budget. Students then planned out their projects making detailed notes in their Kindness Journals as the excitement grew for final implementation. With help from parents and select teachers, students completed their act of kindness, documenting the event with photographs and reflections typed in Google Docs.

As a culmination of our Kindness Passion Projects, students followed a scientific method structure to organize the details of their project onto a display board which was then shared with our community stakeholders in May during our Kindness Share Fair. It was a day of jubilation as students had the opportunity to share their projects with others and realize the power they each had to make a difference in the lives of others. Click on the picture below of the students to learn more about the Kindness Share Fair:

Create a “Passion for Kindness” in Your Classroom

Kindness, often thought of as a “soft skill”, is actually a thread of humanity that is woven in all we do. Character traits such as compassion and empathy naturally occur in students when they seek kindness in the world around them. By creating “A Passion for Kindness” in your classroom, students can strengthen these skills while also integrating academic skills such as digital writing, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.

Each one of us has a passion for something in our lives. Maybe it’s a favorite hobby or sport; perhaps it’s supporting a favorite charity, traveling the world, or raising children. I am passionate about altruism and find great joy in showing kindness to others. Each act of kindness I perform, whether opening the door for a stranger or greater acts of generosity like buying a stranger’s meal, remind me of the power shown in human connection. We have the ability to change the world through our interactions with one another! Even if those changes are merely seeds planted to bloom at another time, one act of kindness has the potential to spark another act of kindness which in turn places a bit more positivity in our daily life.

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Tamara Letter is a passionate technology integrator with 20 years’ experience in education, specializing in differentiation, creativity, and innovation through personalized professional development. As an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) with Hanover County Public Schools, she has presented numerous sessions at local, state, and international conferences. She presented at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in 2014 inspiring others in an Ignite session with her passions for blogging and performing random acts of kindness. At ISTE 2016, she shared her experiences with Passion Projects through poster sessions, webinars, and various digital and printed publications. Tamara also serves as Social Media Chair for the Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE) Conference coming to Roanoke, Virginia December 3-5, 2017.

Connect with Tamara on Twitter @HCPSTinyTech and her new Twitter handle @tamaraletter

Guest post by Paula Ford @prford5, Kindergarten Teacher at Manuel De Vargas Elementary School in San Jose, CA. This post is a continuation of her post on Traveling Toy Animals with her learners in California and with Ashli Engle’s class in farming country in Indiana.

Our question: How is the city and the farm the same and different?

We have now concluded our PBL, and would like to share the rest of our adventures with our traveling toy animals. The children worked together to answer all the questions their friends posed in Ashli Engle’s Kindergarten class in Indiana. Each child sent a letter to their Indiana friend, individually answering their questions. In addition, our class worked together to make an iMovie about what it is like to attend school in Silicon Valley.

Some of the questions from our Indiana friends asked about what our children’s parents do for work. To help answer that questions, some of the children took iPads home with them to spend a day at work with their parent.

The children in Indiana mailed letters back to us, answering all of the questions we had posed.

They also sent us a few videos. The first was of the children walking around the perimeter of their school (they took the mice with them). We were amazed by the all the trees and the horses right on the edge of their school site!

Here is a video of what it is like to attend school in a farming community in Indiana:

Many of our children have never seen the snow, and were excited to see that our friends in Indiana play in the snow at recess. This video had a strong message for us: though we may look different on the outside and do different things, everyone has something in common. For example, they had a pajama day and read books to celebrate Read Across America day just like we did. We are not so different after all.

Our mice looking out the classroom window in Indiana

Toy horses from Indiana

After receiving the videos and answers to our questions, we found that we still had more questions we wanted to ask. We arranged a Skype video session for our children to ask and answer follow up questions.

Following the Skype session we reflected on our learning and revisited the original Driving Question: How is the city and the farm the same and different? We realized that now we are experts on this subject, and we shared this knowledge with our friends and family.

Our PBL Wall

Though this PBL has officially ended, it really is just beginning. Originally, we intended to return the mice and horses back to their original owners. However, the children decided that they would like to keep the animals they received as a special memory of this PBL. In addition, the children have requested to share their contact information with each other so that they can continue to communicate together, and include their families in this process.

Our friends in Ashli Engle’s Kindergarten class in Indiana

Mrs. Ford’s Kindergarten Class with the horses and letters from our Indiana friends

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Paula Ford, @prford5

I graduated from University of California at Davis with my Bilingual Cross-cultural Language and Academic (BCLAD) multiple subject teaching credential, and have been teaching for over twenty years. I began my career in bilingual education, and then moved to teaching second language learners.

I taught kindergarten, first grade, third grade, and have been a resource teacher for grades transitional kindergarten through fifth grade. The majority of my career has been teaching low-socioeconomic English language learners. Currently, I am teaching kindergarten at Manuel De Vargas Elementary School, and I absolutely love it. I’m happy that Barbara has provided a space for me to tell the stories from my classroom collaborating with others and was able to continue from the last post Traveling Toy Animalsso we could finish the PBL activity with you.

I also wrote a post last year for this blog about a Kindergarten PBL my kinderkids undertook with a school in Africa. I look forward to sharing more exciting PBL kindergarten projects in the future.

School starts soon for many. Some have started already. If you think of your classroom as a community of learners right away, then the culture changes. What is the culture of your classroom? Do you…

spend hours and hours getting your classroom ready?

buy lots of posters and materials to put on bulletin boards?

arrange all the furniture just the right way?

If so, you have set the culture of your classroom where you are in control, you manage what happens in your classroom, and your classroom is teacher-centered from the start. I’m not saying you have to take everything down and start over, but think about what it might look like to your learners if you…

left the bulletin boards and walls empty so the room was an empty canvas ready for the community to design?

had all the furniture in the middle of the classroom and had each learner help arrange the desks or tables together?

This sounds like chaos and you may not be ready to do something like this. So start slow. The classroom is where your learners will be part of for almost 9 months. It is their home with you. Consider your life as a learner. What was it like? Did you have any say in how you would learn or contribute to the classroom?

Communities work if there is trust and respect. I remember sitting at desks in rows. Fear was one way to control the class in the classes I attended. Was it yours? Did it work? I didn’t feel much respect in many of my years as a learner – even in college. I felt I knew a lot but was not given many opportunities to share what I knew or dreamed about or wanted to know. I was tested on facts that were not relevant to me. I remember an art class where the teacher scolded me because I went outside the lines. I came from a home of artists where there were no lines. What about you? What was it like in school when you grew up?

Some of you probably hear ” if it was good for me, it’s good for my child.” Remember your experience and what it might feel like for your learners in your classroom. Their lives and experiences are connected and different than many of their teachers. Their experiences include the Internet, mobile devices, and have everything at their fingertips.

If you already set up your classroom or that’s just too out there for you. Then take a chance to arrange your furniture in an unconventional way. Then ask your students for feedback. Keep some of the walls or bulletin boards empty and ask your students to submit ideas on what to put on them. Have ways to hang student work or questions from your students from the ceiling.

Some more ideas for the first few days of school:

meet and greet each student at the door with a smile and a handshake.

invite everyone to contribute to the class rules — include some off the wall, funny rules.

use an icebreaker or have them tell a story so everyone has a voice the first few days.

share what the expectations are for the year and ask for feedback.

I’m sure some of you are thinking “this is an open classroom and I saw it before.” I’m talking about learner voice and choice. This is a classroom where everyone is part of the community and sharing in decisions. There is a feeling that each voice matters. I am only touching on a few points and know there are so many wonderful teachers out there who can share more.

How would you build a community of learners where there is trust and respect?

Everyone is talking about building community, but what does that mean?

There are many ways to build a community. The first is to create a presence in that community that people identify with. Most online environments have various ways that you can do this: building your profile, leaving a comment, retweeting a tweet, uploading pictures and videos, sharing a resource, or collaborating on a project.

How do you create a presence online? How do you sustain an online community?

1. Forming: The group comes together and gets to initially know one other and form as a group.

2. Storming: A chaotic vying for leadership and trialling of group processes

3. Norming: Eventually agreement is reached on how the group operates (norming)

4. Performing: The group practices its craft and becomes effective in meeting its objectives.

Tuckman added a 5th stage 10 years later:

5. Adjourning: The process of “unforming” the group, that is, letting go of the group structure and moving on.

I wanted to take these stages and how they relate to online communities.

Stage 1: Forming This stage is about building a presence in the group or community. Group members rely on safe, patterned behavior. Group members desire acceptance by the group and a need to know that the group is safe. They gather impressions and data about the similarities and differences among them and form preferences for future subgrouping.

Self-organized learning and social media is all about starting the community around you. An online community may not have a leader. There may be multiple leaders or a self-proclaimed leader who starts the conversations. The leaders can change at anytime. Everyone and anyone can join, contribute, or leave when they want. Some members don’t have a presence. They join and lurk. They are just watching the activity in the community.

How can you build community in a group where members come and go? Can you trust that the profiles of some members are real?

Stage 2, Storming, is characterized by competition and conflict as group members organize. Individual members mold their feelings, ideas, attitudes, and beliefs to suit the group with an increased desire for structural clarification and commitment. Questions will arise about who is going to be responsible for what, what the rules are, what the reward system is, and what criteria for evaluation are. Yet, in an online community, there may be no rules. The reward is connecting or someone responding to you, sharing your picture, or retweeting your tweet.

Is this enough to keep you in the community?

What if someone in the group writes something controversial and upsets many of the members? Will people stay in the group? Some people will step forward and take responsibility for posting, answering questions, and sharing information beyond the community.

In Stage 3: Norming stage, group members are engaged in active acknowledgment of all members’ contributions, community building and maintenance, and solving of group issues. Members are willing to change their preconceived ideas or opinions on the basis of facts presented by other members, and they actively ask questions of one another. Leadership is shared, and cliques dissolve. This is the true online community that is working. When members begin to know-and identify with-one another, the level of trust in their personal relations contributes to the development of group cohesion. It is during this stage of development (assuming the group gets this far) that people begin to experience a sense of group belonging and a feeling of relief as a result of resolving interpersonal conflicts. The major task function of stage three is the data flow between group members: They share feelings and ideas, solicit and give feedback to one another, and explore actions related to the task. Creativity is high. Members feel good about being part of an effective group.

The major drawback of the norming stage is that members may begin to fear the inevitable future breakup of the group; they may resist change of any sort. Actually online communities tend to stay around even if there is no activity. Sometimes you can go back after years and realize you still have a membership there.

Is this a community? Does a community only work if there is activity? Is the community safe? Do you feel safe to post what you believe? How do you trust the people in a community?

In Stage 4: Performing stage, people work independently, in subgroups, or as a total unit. Their roles adjust to the changing needs of the group and individuals. By now, the group is the most productive. Individual members become self-assuring, and the need for group approval is past. Members are both highly task oriented and highly people oriented. There is unity: group identity is complete, group morale is high, and group loyalty is intense. The task function becomes genuine problem solving, leading toward optimal solutions and optimum group development. There is support for experimentation in solving problems and an emphasis on achievement. The overall goal is productivity through problem solving and work.

Do online communities ever get to Stage 4?

The only way I see this stage working is with a facilitator or someone nudging the members of the community to participate online. If you just want a community to share when you want, then you don’t care about a specific task or project. You join the community to connect and share resources or ideas. If you have a specific task or project, then you need a plan with who’s doing what by when… and a facilitator or coach checking in regularly.

Stage 5 Adjourning means a community ends. This is not happening in online communities and social media unless you leave the community. Or the infrastructure housing the community ends. Some questions about building community:

How do you design interaction so all members contribute and participate?

How do you determine roles and responsibilities for each member and the facilitator?

How do you see the difference of an on-site and online community of practice?

The reason I wanted to discuss this today is that I am in multiple communities where I am the only one posting. It’s frustrating. I write on this blog and people write me via email a question or comment or scoopit or retweet it. I really appreciate when someone comments on my blog even if I don’t agree with their position. People are not posting on blogs like they used to. People are commenting in social media with 140 characters or pinging back in Scoopit or pinning on Pinterest.

Is this community or just a way to share your thoughts and ideas? Online communities are different now then just a few years ago but are they sustainable? Are they real communities that have good discussions that you can refer to later?

I am in groups in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Scoopit and many more social media environments. Are these the type of communities that you can use to build communities of practice? I’ve tried Ning and Wikispaces, but they still depend on the facilitator to get conversations going and many have no leaders. I built My eCoach for educators to build communities of practice. I wanted a safe and secure online community that allowed for private conversations and the ability to share publicly.

Why?

I know the word “transparency” is big. However, some things you discuss online happens more effectively in private areas. That means you need to trust that whatever you write or share is used the way you would hope it would be used. You can still publish publicly. Now that everything is moving toward “Open” and “Transparent,” more people are uploading all of their pictures and videos to the cloud. They are also sharing their private conversations. This more than often backfires on the author. Now you can have your own YouTube Channel. Anyone can be an author, a filmmaker, a journalist. But having a coach or facilitator helps. I know I’m taking a chance writing here my thoughts. It would probably be better if someone proofread it first. Oh well! Let’s see if any of you comment on my blog.

I found that many conversations didn’t happen effectively without a facilitator so I set up an eCoach program. eCoaches keep the conversations going and encourage members of the community to participate.

Social media doesn’t care if everyone participates. I believe the different types of communities are used for different purposes. I don’t know what I would do without social media. But I still need My eCoach and many members of My eCoach keep coming back because they know it is safe, secure, and their intellectual property is still in their digital locker. It’s all about believing that all of your material will always be there when you need it. That the conversations are still there. Try to find the tweet with the link you saw last week.

Gone!

Yes, you can bookmark it on Diigo or Plurk. Facebook is trying to build community based on each member’s timeline. Google+ is trying to build community around circles. I am watching and believing that social media is going to look different in the future. Communities are evolving. Communities are becoming extensions of our families and friends. Actually many are blurring between business, family and friends. I get it that social media is about all of us nudging and supporting each other, but usually only 1-10% are really contributing. I’m keeping My eCoach because I see the importance of public and private spaces and an ability for a facilitator to nudge and help members participate. When communities ended in My eCoach, members stopped using it. All of a sudden, many are coming back. They tried to make their own eCoach system. They used existing programs using social media programs but when they realized that their data is sold to third parties, they lost trust. When they saw relevant ads based on what they were writing in their messages, they didn’t feel safe. When they came back to My eCoach, their “stuff” was still there and there are no adds. Their data is not sold to third parties. Yes, it’s not a great revenue model, but we have to believe in the cloud, in the people, in the community.

So I am part of many communities. My neighborhood is my community. I know many of the people in my neighborhood. I feel safe and secure because I can walk around the block and know that people know who I am and I know who they are. My family is my community. Many are online in my social media but we are family first. I am in different groups online and build ongoing relationships with people I met online, in My eCoach and other communities and now are close in real time face-to-face. Community is important. Building a sustainable community takes time, trust, and building relationships that matter.

“I think I’m like many teachers: most of us feel like we haven’t yet arrived where we want to be in terms of what we’re doing with students. I have so much further to go and I really want to do more work that infuses rigor and relevance in the curriculum and connects my students to both their communities and the French-speaking community.” Nicole Naditz

My search for student-centered learning environments led me to Nicole Naditz who teaches French at Bella Vista High School in Fair Oaks near Sacramento, California. Our conversation first started about flipping the classroom. She wrote me:

“I’m still a novice in terms of fully turning over my curriculum to the students, but I’m always striving to work more in that direction. In the meantime, I work hard to ensure that what their learning is put to meaningful use, is rigorous and engages them with the French-speaking community beyond our school.
For the online projects with other countries, I have typically designed them in cooperation with the other teacher, although my students always have significant input. I tell the students to write a book encouraging children to eat healthfully. After that, they are free to create. The best books are sent to France or Belgium to be put in the waiting rooms of children’s areas of hospitals or dentists.

That’s when I knew Nicole was moving into the student-centered world even if she didn’t realize it. Email after email, I received specific projects from Nicole.

Preparing for Collaboration with Burkina Faso

For their work with Burkina Faso (the village has no input), Nicole had an idea called ‘Through their Eyes’ about students in both California and the village in Burkina exchanging pictures of how they see their world and lives. Burkina Faso, in West Africa surrounded by six countries, was occupied by France up to 1960. It is currently a member of the African Union and La Francophonie.

The students ran with it from there, taking the pictures, explaining them in French, creating the photo album and selecting other items to send to the students and school along with their pictures. In the box with the photos, they also included some student work from French 3 (student-created “magazine” about French-speaking comic-book characters) and disposable cameras for them to use for their pictures. The students also wanted to send hot chocolate since no one in the village has ever tasted it except for the volunteer. French 4/AP is now matched with a new Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina Faso. The village where she works does not have Internet (or any electricity) but she can access Internet when she goes into town. One day, while she was in town, we decided to go onto Ustream and introduce ourselves to her. We recorded it and sent her the link because it wasn’t possible for her to watch live. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17872769.

Nicole’s students haven’t yet received their cameras back to get their pictures. This is a very slow process without Internet!!!

Student-Created Museums

Two student-created museums were done by classes at the Alliance Française de Sacramento. Hosting the museum at the Alliance guarantees they will get at least some other French speakers for whom to present instead of just presenting to the teacher in class. Nicole believes it is extremely important that students do work for an audience greater and more relevant than just for the teacher! http://studentmuseums.wikispaces.com/Le%C3%A7ons – Picture of student explaining show to guests.

African Tales by Solar Light

This was a community event held in cooperation with the local public library as a celebration of solar power before they sent the grant-funded lanterns to a village in Senegal so the families could stop using kerosene to light their huts and the students in the village could do homework and study after dark–students did all the research about solar energy to pick the lanterns and they designed a Web site about their findings.

The lanterns were funded by a grant from the local utility, SMUD (Sacramento Metropolitan Utility District). The students did such a good job researching solar lanterns to purchase with the grant money that they were able to get twice as many as were needed for the Village, so the class donated another 100 lanterns to the local Red Cross for use during emergencies when there is no electricity. http://burkinasolarproject.wikispaces.com/

“Une Nuit à Paris”

Her students are designing a community event celebrating francophone cultures. This will take place at the end of May or beginning of June this year. They chose the theme “Une Nuit à Paris”, how they want to divide up the space (multipurpose room) with exhibits, entertainment, food, etc., and they will be the ones preparing all of the exhibits and food, and presenting all of the entertainment. They will also be the ones hosting the event and speaking with the guests in both French and English (because the audience will have both). This will feature food samplings, student work–possibly including books they wrote and published on Storybird (the class may pay to have them actually printed and bound for the class to share), entertainment by the students, and a few museum-style exhibits on topics of interest to the students.

UStream

Earlier this year, French 4/AP created their own inventions and presented them on Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/voil%C3%A0-le-fran%C3%A7ais This was very informal. It was a basic homework assignment rather than a “project”. It went with the AP theme of science and technology. We were studying the role and responsibilities of scientists and inventors.

Nicole has taught French to grades 3 through 12, including AP French Language since 1993. Nicole is very active in professional organizations. A recipient of numerous awards, including the 2010 Jane Ortner Educating through Music Award, she serves as webmaster and advocacy chair on the FLAGS board. She also serves on the Leadership Team of the Capital Foreign Language Project and she served on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages interview committees for the first National Foreign Language Teacher of the Year in 2005 and for the Florence Steiner Leadership in K-12 Education Award in 2007. Nicole was invited to join the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing Subject Matter Advisory Panel for Languages Other than English in 2004. She is the founder of the Read Around the World Program and organizes additional opportunities for students to experience languages and cultures outside of the classroom.

Nicole has presented on a variety of topics at local and state workshops since 1999 and has received several grants for study in France and Canada. She was named an Outstanding Teacher by both the Foreign Language Association of Greater Sacramento and the California Language Teachers’ Association and was a finalist for the California League of High Schools Educator of the Year in Region 3. In addition, Nicole achieved National Board Certification in 2003 and earned her M.Ed in 2006. In 2012, she was named San Juan USD Teacher of the Year, Sacramento County Teacher of the Year and was one of 12 finalists for California State Teacher of the Year. That same year, she also became a Google Certified Teacher.

She has been a member of the FLAGS board since 2001. In her spare time, she enjoys figure skating, calligraphy, singing, crocheting, musical theater and travel.

I’ve been thinking about the promise of Innovation Centers. These are Community Learning Centers that incorporate K-12 schools, the public library, and a local university and/or community college where learning happens 24/7 with learners of all ages. These centers could be a combination of all of these places and include businesses and non-profits in the area. In some cases, community colleges and senior centers might be involved. In other cases, a preschool might be included in a project. These can also be blended versions where the place is one or all of these sites plus a virtual place to collaborate and learn. I’m going to expand on the virtual place more later.

The idea of an Innovation Center in different parts of the country means that each community can investigate local issues on a global scale. Each Center will include the latest technology and enough bandwidth to handle multiple devices per person. Each Center will be designed by the community to reflect their community. The center is open to all learners but not like a regular school.

One community might address urban gardening and how to feed more people in less space. Another community might address strategies for recycling and reducing trash. All findings will be shared among all Innovation Centers and collaboration will be encouraged.

The goal could be to push the envelope: where learning focuses on real-world projects, problems, and challenges on a global scale. Just imagine identifying a local problem in your area in the US and connect with a school in Africa or Nepal with the same problem. Common problems could be:

Lack of clean water

Pollution in your area

Money managing skills

Culture and Community

Jobs or Entrpreneurship

Everything will be student-centered and inquiry-based. Teacher roles change. They are co-learners and co-designers with their students and are advisors for a team of learners. As advisors they are with the same learners for several years. Actually the learners are driving the design of the projects and the community. The community is a viable entity that happens anywhere and everywhere. The culture of that community transcends the design of the projects.

Learning will be personalized by personal learner profiles with support from advisors. Each learner and advisor will be encouraged to take risks, question, and use critical-thinking skills to address local problems as collaborative projects. Personal learning goals will meet Common Core Standards and address curriculum requirements of their learning plan. Individuals and teams will meet learning goals as part of each project or re-evaluate the goals as they monitor their progress towards the goal. Each learner will collect evidence of learning in an ePortfolio and share via social media, websites, mobile devices, etc. Or the evidence will be a product, a showcase, an event. This all depends on the designers of the projects — the learners. We may even want to call them something different than learners.

I started thinking about this many years ago and then again recently when I added my idea to the Grand Challenge. If you like this idea, vote here. If you have more ideas for this challenge, please add your comment there and/or here.

I know there are great ideas and innovations out there. It’s all about finding out about them so we can share and learn together.

We are educators. All of us. If one child drops out of school early, the whole community suffers.

We need to create the conditions that value all children especially our at-risk children. In Oakland, I saw how devastating the dropout rate was long ago when I was writing Digital High School grants and mentioned my concern. Young black boys were dropping out before eighth grade and it’s worse now.

Today only 30% of African-American males are graduating from high school in Oakland. This is wrong. We spend more money on prisons than educating our children. This is more than wrong. We need to start early educating, mentoring, and building community to raise our children — all children. Jean Quan, Mayor of Oakland, who was on the school board and understands the problem was on the panel of Class Action this morning (9/4/11) with Christopher Chatmon and Mitchell Kapor.

If children dropout and there are no jobs even for educated youth, what happens to these boys? Oakland Unified School District is taking action. They formed a task force called African-American Male Achievement with Chris Chatmon taking the lead. They are starting young with community schooling opening the schools and gyms with programs like Math and Science Academies. Mitchell Kapor from the Mitchell Kapor Foundation wrote…

“We will all lose if we persist in doing business as usual. Our state cannot continue to claim the mantle of innovation if we continue to ignore the human capital that exists in our communities. We cannot remain competitive in the global marketplace by investing more in filling up prison and jail cells – with disproportionately more poor people and people of color – than in creating an educated workforce.”

Chris Chatmon said on Class Action this morning: “The school system was not set up to meet the needs of black and brown boys. The street culture is stronger than school culture. We need a process of engaging and motivating by taking them through a value education.” Jean Quan is coordinating schools and the community. One big thing is keeping the libraries open.

I love Oakland. I have worked with Oakland schools for years and saw the potential in every child. I am very excited that Oakland Unified School District has this task force and is working with the city and community leaders to make a difference in our children’s lives.

Here’s my take on it:
If we want to keep brown and black boys in schools and help each child reach their fullest potential, schools have to change. The schools still have top-down management issues. Doors are closed. Teachers are lecturing and teaching to the test. I walk through the halls and see kids not connecting and drifting off. They get bored and in trouble. Then it starts spiraling down. Like Chris mentioned: we need to make them co-designers of their learning so it is relevant to them. They not only need more role models, they need to find a purpose, a passion that gives them some hope that their lives will be worth something.

I see these kids. They are smart. But they are told they are not smart. We need to look at what “Smart” means. It is not how well they do on a test. We need to find different methods of assessing what they know and can do. I believe in these kids and am passionate about saving each one. I am only one person but there are more like me out there who want to help make a difference. I have seen the best teaching in Oakland and I work around the country, but teachers are caught in a bureaucratic system that keeps them from innovating. Unless there is a grant, there is no money to help build a new type of curriculum. Unless we “think out of the box”, we continue with the same prescriptive curriculum that does not engage our children.

Idea:

How about creating a K-12 Innovation community school in Oakland where all learning is centered around each child? Each child is part of a team similar to Finland.

Each child is with one teacher for K-3 and this community has parents, mentors, and community members part of the team for that child. Bring in a teacher education program from a local university and create teams Then another teacher can be assigned as advisor from grades 4-8 so there is consistency to monitor progress. Collect artifacts of learning and reflect via portfolios. Design new learning environments that foster creativity and inquiry. For 9-12 each teacher is an advisor for 20 students who guides them in the portfolio process and finds support in the community for internships, shadowing, interviews, building resumés and interviewing skills, and counseling on career and college readiness. Check out my post on Skills and Values Employers Want.

These are just a few ideas that can help all children and especially those at-risk.

I wrote this post in 2005 where it is cross posted on Rethinking Learning. I read it and thought it needed to be posted again with a few updates.

A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is comprised of people (teachers, para-professionals, administrators, and other community members) who collectively examine and collaboratively work to improve teaching practice. A PLC can but does not have to be situated in one school or district. With the ability to work online from anywhere at anytime, members of the community can connect, find others with similar interests, study and review existing teaching practice, and do action research to improve teaching and learning.

Being a teacher is challenging work and can be isolating. Many teachers teach the way they were taught which many times tends to be traditional lecture style: the expert or the giver of knowledge. Now with accountability issues, teachers are pressured to meet standards and teach to the test. What I am seeing is more teaching that is prescriptive in nature. In some areas, especially for at-risk students, this style can be effective in teaching reading but less effective for students to retain deeper concepts. When teachers can interact with other teachers who have similar teaching situations, take the time to test and challenge their ideas, inferences and interpretations, and review and process information with each other, they grow professionally. This learning experience grows exponentially with the expanding exchange of ideas and multiple sources of knowledge from a variety of participants of the PLC.

A PLC can be a powerful professional development opportunity that encourages change and improves professional and personal learning.

Supportive and Shared Leadership. The collegial and facilitative participation of the administrator shares leadership with his/her staff by facilitating their work.

Share Values and Vision. All PLC members develop a shared vision based on their commitment to the needs of their students and their desire to improve their teaching practice or grow their own skills and learning.

Collective Learning and Application of Learning (Collective Creativity). PLC members move beyond existing procedures and teaching methods to design strategies for improvement based on high standards, latest research, and best practices.

Supportive Conditions. The environment is risk-free so all members are safe and comfortable to collaborate, communicate, learn, make decisions, problem solve, and share their results and products.

Physical Conditions and Human Capacities.

Time to meet and talk

Small size of school or PLC

Physical proximity of staff to one another

Teaching roles that are interdependent

Communication structures

School autonomy

Teacher empowerment

I agree with the first four dimensions for any school. An online PLC can take the fifth dimension beyond the classroom and school walls.

PLC members can meet anytime from anywhere.

The PLC can be multiple sizes with the support of eCoaches who guide and facilitate the process.

Anybody can be the teacher and learner and eCoach.

Communication online is a paradigm shift for teachers and needs to be designed into daily routines.

Teacher and Learner empowerment.

Learner centered environments.

The PLC as an Organizational Culture

Most learners adopt the organization’s guiding principles. If these principles are top-down decisions without input from all the stakeholders, the members of the organization may implement them without commitment and belief that they will affect positive change. The organization will be more successful if all members are valued and involved in the decisions on the direction of the community right from the beginning.

A sense of relational trust – linking the notions of respect, competence, personal regard, and integrity with academic achievement – also strengthens the community and makes shared decision-making possible. (Gordon – 2002)

“Many of our schools are good schools, if only this were 1965.”-Louise Stoll & Dean Fink

The world is changing. Today everyone is connected to each other with information instantly at your fingertips. Everything is changing, that is, except schools. Teachers and administrators are integrating technology by adding interactive whiteboards, instant response clickers, and even 1:1 laptop programs. However, one glance into most classrooms, you would find very little has changed over the past 30 or more years. Education still mainly involves teachers feeding information to students to cover the curriculum in preparation for a standardized test. 21st Century teachers involve everyone in the community in their children’s learning.

Changing the learning environment takes more than adding technology to the mix. It means bringing in the real world, involving the school community, and changing the learning environment so our children have the skills they need to compete in the global economy. Some of the resources we had in our homes 30-40 years ago include:

Television without remotes

Landline phones

Records and maybe 8 track cassettes

First personal computers with less than 128K owned by very few

No Internet or maybe a select few had email

Today, most children, even those who may be at-risk, have cell phones. Many of these cell phones are Smartphones with the ability to connect to the Internet, text messages, listen to music, and even watch TV and movies. The power of these Smartphones is thousands of times more powerful than what we had with multiple devices 30 years ago.

Culture influences student learning more than even formal learning with easy access to cable television, music, video games, cell phones, movies, and other technology. Before and after school students connect to each other and virtual places that transform them into worlds we have no control over. The classroom can no longer be separated from the real world. Educators need to find ways to make learning relevant and applicable to students’ real world so that they are influenced by intellectual information rather than simply the pop culture of today, which has changed drastically over the past 30 years. [Johnson, B and McElroy, T. 2010]

Authentic Relationships with the Community

Teachers have been and many still prefer working in an isolated environment. The classroom is their domain. The teacher who prefers working in this situation may lack the confidence they need to engage in authentic conversations with parents and others from the community. The classroom door is literally closed to the world. The 21st Century teacher involves everyone in the community that believe in their children and want the best for them. This open and inviting teacher welcomes dialogue, builds authentic relationships with all key members involved, and sees this as an opportunity to develop classroom support for their students and themselves. Authentic relationships are built upon respect between all the members of the school community. Each member has responsibilities in developing and nurturing these relationships. All key individuals are important because of the experiences and abilities they bring to the educational community. It takes everyone in the educational community (the village) to produce an intentional relationship.

Opening up the classroom and inviting the community to be involved with what is happening in the classroom is new for many of our teachers. Even our newest teachers may not have learned these strategies in their teacher education programs. Change is scary. This administrator can build the relationships with the community first by promoting their school and its goals. The administrator can reach out to teachers, leaders, businesses, parents, and other stakeholders to encourage their involvement in designing a shared vision for the school. Everyone needs to voice their hopes and fears in a risk-free environment. A shared vision gives all stakeholders a sense of ownership and feeling of pride in the outcomes. Asking a business or organization to participate in students’ learning activities may open doors that lead to new doors.

You never know what could present itself if members of the community realize they could help their school. Some ways might include:

a plot for a community garden

mentors and tutors for the after-school program

career day

author book talks

technology support

offering prizes and rewards for events

In turn, students could participate in community service learning projects:

reading to young children

maintaining the garden

teaching technology to seniors

being a docent for an exhibit

Bringing Parents on Board

Today’s families have also greatly changed compared to 30-40 years ago. There are extreme pressures on families with the economic concerns and other demands of today’s culture. The number of working moms has doubled from 30 percent in the 1970’s to almost 60 percent today. Just to keep the family together means that Americans work 160 hours more per year than they did 20 years ago. With the economic conditions, some parents are out of work and having difficult times paying their bills. On top of that, many students live with one parent, a guardian, or two working parents. Parenting is even more difficult when you consider the gap between parents and their tech savvy children.

The 21st century teacher can initiate new types of relationships with their students’ parents. This teacher contacts each students parents or guardian to learn more about their child, their hopes and dreams for their child, and how they can work together to guide their child to success. They become a team that is a collaborative support system that keeps a close eye on the progress of their child. The school can have an online portal that parents can access to check on homework, grades, and projects. Since face-to-face meetings may not be possible with parents busy schedules, teachers can forge a connection with parents in a virtual environment. Teachers can connect using a variety of tools such as setting up a website or wiki, a newsletter, a contact form, chat, email, IM, Twitter, blogs, and even providing their cell phone number. In this instantly connectability world, parents and teachers do not have to be strangers.

Reference

Johnson, B. and McElroy, T. The Changing Role of the Teacher in the 21st September 2010. Vol. 7. No 9. Teachers.net. Online. Retrieved September 20, 2010. http://teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/dr-brad-johnson-tammy-maxson-mcelroy/changing-role-of-the-teacher/” target=”_blank”>http://teachers.net/gazette/wordpress/dr-brad-johnson-tammy-maxson-mcelroy/changing-role-of-the-teacher/